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Weekly Update: Quality of Hire, Cuil, Assessments

Aug 5, 2008
This article is part of a series called News & Trends.

Quality of Hire Measurement
Reporting and metrics is always a hot topic for recruiting, but so few companies do it right. In my research over the years, most companies measure time-to-hire and cost-per-hire but ignore quality-of-hire. Lisa Shapiro Mendell is an exception. She is interested in adding this key performance indicator to her recruitment metric dashboard and wants to know what other companies have done the same.

Ravi Subramanian recommends hiring manager surveys and assessments. Michael Chernesky asks a very relevant question…who is accountable? Bonita Martin says recruiters and Steven Yeong says hiring managers. Joshua Letourneau offered some great insight based on his experiences. While many of his clients do measure quality of hire, their process often fails because of one of three problems. They don’t measure quality of hire beyond the first day; the hiring manager survey turns into a game since “recruiters are incentivized to make the survey look good”; or feuds spark between HR and the hiring manager. Josh’s solution to overcome these challenges lies in performance assessments that measure expected versus actual performance. Anyone out there having great success measuring QOH? Share your story; we would love to hear it.

Wednesday’s Question of the Day
Anna Patterson’s latest Internet search engine, Cuil, is backed by $33 million in venture capital and expected to outshine Google. I read negative reviews of Cuil and wanted to know if anyone is using it and seeing results. Glenn Gutmacher, Sourcer extraordinaire, is not a fan…it is slow and produces poor quality results. Without launching an alpha or beta version, Glenn believes they “set high expectations and they ‘way’ underdelivered.” T Tallis agrees. Amanda Blazo is more optimistic. She acknowledges Cuil’s shortcomings but encourages us to give it time.

Phone Screening Candidates
Diane Propsner wonders: before a third-party recruiter sends a resume to a corporate recruiter, How much time should he or she spend on phone screening and what questions should be asked? She gave us an overview of her process and the questions included. Andrew Stone agrees with Diane that 10-15 minutes is not enough time for building a relationship with a candidate. Tania Murray recommends “tailoring your cover sheet to your client to focus on just what they (candidate) told you is important to them.” According to Tania, it is critical to know the candidates goals and motivations. Joy Naui offers a different approach by suggesting that third-party recruiters first contact the hiring manager. The phone screening should include key points based on that conversation. Questions should include more than technical skill questions. If a candidate recognizes that you are genuine about finding them the right job, they will agree to answer more questions.

Thursday’s Question of the Week
After hearing Dr. Wendell Williams’ Selection and Assessment webinar on July 23, an attendee wanted to know if behavioral or situational screening questions are better and why. I thought I would ask you. Joe Payne is in favor of behavioral questions since they are a good indicator of past actions and can allow interviewers to dig deeper. Matt Cooper brings up an interesting point that most candidates are too prepared for behavioral questions with the amount of information available on the Internet including examples and preparation tools. Interviewers need to be creative and get more specific. KT Connor agrees with Matt and also cautions against self-reporting assessments instead recommending objective decision tools.

Are Job Boards Becoming Obsolete?<!–
This is a hot topic of debate, check it out!

This article is part of a series called News & Trends.
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